Hello out there,
There has never been much on PNG Music on this great forum. That is why I have decided to mention here a favourite from my collection. The song is mostly strings (the PNG String Band style), the lyrics are written by a group from the island of Siassi (named after an earlier Italian sailor) in Morobe Province and the vocals is by Oshen a great pacific musician who spent his growing years in a paradise of Butaweng (Finschafen, Morobe Province) where his father was a missionary doctor. He now lives at his home in Hawaii but his heart still remains in Butaweng. While most of his songs are backed up by an electric band with keyboards etc., this song is "unplugged" and beautiful to listen to. So.... try oshen and other PNG music.

The once popular National Arts School Band Sanguma band of the late 70s gave way to the Tumbuna Band comprising pupils who came into the school after the Samguma Band pupils had graduated and left. Since then I have not heard much of their PNG-Jazz type music here. There were others that passed through the school who went solo such as Megusa of EHP.

There was definitely alot of talent among the PNG-Jazz music pioneers. They set new standards for PNG artists in those days to aspire for. However because people could easily sway to Reggae, Rock n Roll, and Disco Sanguma succeeded only as a concert band and could not compete on the market with the other local groups. And because they were emulating the British African group "Osibisa" (with their African-Jazz-Rock), when the Osibisa era faded, they too faded.

A visiting West Papua Group (Black Brothers) who were seeking asylum from Indonesia at around that time also stole much of the limelite with a mix of rock, Bahasa Indonesia and west Papua dress and continued to influence the trend of PNG Music for the next few years after Sanguma. One of their songs ("Yalikoe" from the sepik province) actually came top in European Dance charts in the early 1980s.